path, past the house, aside into the
garden, its tangle of flowers and shrubbery rich with neglected bloom and
sweet with all manner of scents--sweet-william, larkspur, clove-pink.
Leaver, stooping, picked a spicy-smelling, fringe-bordered pink, and
sniffed its sun-warmed fragrance.

"It takes me back to my boyhood," he said, "when I used to think a visit
at my grandfather's old country place the greatest thing that could
happen to me. There was a big bed of these flowers under my window. When
the sun was hot upon them they rivalled the spices of Araby."

Miss Mathewson stood looking back at the house. From the garden, which
lay at the side and behind it, it showed all of its forlornness and few
of its possibilities.

"What will she make of living there, even for the year she means to
stay?" she wondered, aloud. "Now, if it were I, it wouldn't seem strange;
I am used to living in a little old house. But such a girl as Miss
Ruston--I can hardly imagine her here. She thinks the house and the old
garden will make fine backgrounds for her work. I suppose they will."

"Miss Ruston?" Dr. Leaver repeated. "Was that the name?"

"Miss Charlotte Ruston, of South Carolina, I believe. I never heard the
name before, have you?"

"It is an unusual one. I have known only one person of that name." Leaver
walked slowly over to a decayed and tumbling bench beneath an apple-tree,
whose boughs had been so long untrimmed that they spread almost to the
earth. He sat down upon it, rather heavily, and lifted the clove-pink
to his nostrils again. His dark brows contracted slightly. He looked at
the house. "It will have to have a good deal done to it before it is fit
for any one," he observed. "You said there was an old lady to come, too?"

"A most beautiful little old lady, whom Miss Ruston seemed to be very
anxious over, lest she suffer any harm. Dr. Burns, when he heard of it,
insisted on coming over here to make sure the house could be made
perfectly dry and comfortable for her."

"He was right. Little old ladies must be taken care of, and young women
are apt to think any place that is picturesque is safe."

Miss Mathewson, seeing him apparently more interested in the subject than
he was apt to be in the topics she brought up to amuse him, except as he
assumed interest for her sake, went on with this one, and told him all
she knew about Miss Ruston's plans, ending with a description of the
photographs she had shown.

"But I should